The Tempering of Men (12 page)

“Help?” said Vethulf, his eyebrows going up in exaggerated disbelief. “That's not what it sounded like to me.”

“Vethulf,” Isolfr said, irritation plain in his voice and in the pack-sense.

“You never stand up for yourself,” Vethulf said past Brokkolfr.

“And so you're going to stand up for me? I don't recall asking for that favor, wolfjarl.” Isolfr very rarely lost his temper—Vethulf was the only one who seemed able to provoke him that far—but when he did, wolves and men alike prudently found business elsewhere. Brokkolfr, face burning and stomach in a knot, backed away as Isolfr stood up, leaving the space between wolfsprechend and wolfjarl clear.

“I won't have you browbeaten,” Vethulf said between his teeth.

“Unless you're the one doing it,” Isolfr said, face white and set, pale eyes glittering.

Brokkolfr swung about and headed for the woods as fast as he could walk, Amma anxiously at his heels. The pack-sense followed him, wolfsprechend and wolfjarl snapping and snarling for dominance. Brokkolfr was aware in a distracted way of other wolves and men slinking off into the woods or finding urgent work elsewhere in Franangfordheall and town. Amma, gamely following, was heavier on her feet than when she had been lean and virginal, the pups slowly becoming an impediment. It would not be long now, Brokkolfr thought, and contemplation of pups and potentials was enough to distract him for some time.

He was working so hard not to dwell in the conflict or replay that disaster of a conversation in his head that he paid very little attention to where he was going and was surprised to discover he'd found his way back to the cave that Kari had shown him.

A place where
this
pack won't follow you,
Kari had said; just at the moment, Brokkolfr couldn't think of anything he wanted more.

A cool draught wafted from the mouth of the cavern. Brokkolfr stepped toward it, and Amma made a low, concerned moan. “I know you don't like it,” he said. “You don't have to come.”

But he wasn't quite confident to go in alone, with nobody except his wolf the wiser. He reached into the pack-sense, relieved that the tension of Isolfr and Vethulf's snapping match had dissipated. What underlay it was still there, the sense of off-balance and awkward, but that wasn't his problem anymore. He'd done his duty and brought it to the wolfsprechend's attention, and the wolfsprechend could take it from here.

It was a relief, he thought, to fold up a responsibility that way and hand it off to the next man. Not for the first time, he pitied Isolfr.

But right now, he did not want Isolfr. He wanted Kari.

He reached out through the pack-sense, through Amma's awareness of the wolfthreat. Not a konigenwolf's understanding of her pack, but still. Nothing to be trifled with. Amma would understand that he wanted Hrafn and Hrafn's brother, and sooner or later, with the relaxed timing of wolves, Hrafn and Kari would appear.

Wyvern blood, nose-stinging and slick,
Brokkolfr thought, knowing that his attempts at the language Amma shared with other wolves were no more than a toddler's babbling. She looked at him quizzically, head tilted, and he thought Hrafn's name again.

Amma looked away, leaned her head back, and howled. A long eerie descant, a summoning cry. By the end of it, other wolf-voices picked it up, and such was the carrying power of those wolf-voices that he heard it echoed and echoed back again.

“Show-off,” he accused the wolf, who laughed at him and flopped down on the leaf litter to wait.

With a sigh, Brokkolfr settled down beside her and pillowed his head on her flank. Puppies wriggled in her belly, one a warm kicking bump against his ear. If she was determined to embarrass him, he might as well nap.

*   *   *

Kari and Hrafn must have been in the area, because it wasn't a candlemark later that the patter of footsteps across dry leaves roused Brokkolfr from his doze. Amma craned her neck up, but upon seeing—and scenting—that it was packmates, she let her head thump on the soft earth again.

For his part, Hrafn sniffed Brokkolfr's hand in brief greeting and then dropped down beside Amma, yawning so elaborately that Brokkolfr imagined him turning his teeth to the light so the facets could flash like displayed gems. He laid his head down on his paws and watched the men with slitted eyes.

“So I was thinking,” Brokkolfr said by way of greeting, “that we could try to explore deeper. If you were game.”

“I was born game,” Kari said. “Come on. Let's go.”

The darkness seemed less oppressive this time and the tight squeeze more comfortable when Brokkolfr knew what to expect. This time, he managed to follow Kari closely, not waiting for the torch to be kindled, and on the other side of the tunnel they sat for a moment in a darkness as utter and abject as a trellwarren, just listening to one another breathe in the dark.

Brokkolfr could feel Kari beside him, as if a tattered envelope of warm air surrounded the wildling. Now that they were quiet and still, Brokkolfr also felt the moving air lift and stir the fine hairs at his temples and on his nape, where the part between his braids fell. After long silent moments, the scrape and the brilliance of a flint struck on steel were brazen, startling.

The torches kindled easily, flickering just a little. Silently Brokkolfr and Kari descended to the pool room and there stood shoulder to shoulder, staring across the unrippled water.

Kari cleared his throat. It echoed over the pool and back, the bounce of sound around that arched and hollow space covering his voice with overtones like a wolf pack howling in harmony. “So what makes you think there's more to the cave? I mean, the water has to come from somewhere, but we can't exactly follow it underground.”

“Can you feel the breeze?” Brokkolfr said.

The stark light of the torches moved terrible shadows across Kari's cheeks and forehead as his head bobbed once. “It's more or less always like that.”

Brokkolfr swallowed. “You know how in a longhouse, if you only open one door, the heat stays inside? But if you open two, the wind blows right through it?”

The way Kari's expression stilled was not an artifact of the firelight. “You think there's another entrance.”

Brokkolfr let one shoulder lift and dip, ridiculously aware that here he was, a bearded man with a wolf of his own, coy as a maiden with his opinions, seeking Kari's approval. But Kari, though no more than a year or three older than Brokkolfr, was a tested warrior, shieldbrother to Isolfr Ice-heart. And all Brokkolfr had done in his short life was bond a wolf who liked playing with puppies, and manage to lose four-fifths of a heallthreat to a troll incursion. “Air can go where we cannot.”

“Still,” Kari said, the impassive expression breaking into a grin, “it doesn't hurt to look.”

*   *   *

If air could go where they could not, Brokkolfr was somewhat startled to discover where they could go. The flicker of the torches led them: the strength of the air currents blowing from any given crevice was their clue.

“Don't get the water in your eyes,” Kari said. “It's safe to drink, but the old Franangfordthreat said that if it got into your eyes or ears, it could eat holes in your brain and you'd die in six months with a head full of sea-sponge.”

“Well,” said Brokkolfr dubiously, “I suppose if it can dissolve stone, it can dissolve brains.”

When they crossed the pond, they crossed it one at a time, holding each torch high, wading up to their chests in steaming water, stirring silt from the bottom that might have lain undisturbed since nothing but Jotun, trolls, and svartalfar ruled the world.

Brokkolfr tried to be careful of the brittle laceworks of stone floating atop the still water—stone! floating!—but inevitably his ripples swamped some. It left a feeling of sadness in him, a sense that perhaps one could not see a thing without destroying it. When he waded out of the pool, though, Kari was waiting, grinning, on his belly before a passageway no taller than the span of three hands. “I found something.”

Brokkolfr was careful to look back over his shoulder whenever the tunnels were wide enough to crane his head around—he'd spent enough time in the forest to know that the same place could look very different viewed from one direction as opposed to another—and Kari produced a bit of charcoal from a trouser pocket and sketched arrows on the damp yellow-white stone of the walls. It still looked to Brokkolfr like candle wax, but it tasted of salt and was brittle enough that a few needle-fine filaments shattered against Brokkolfr's hair before he learned to avoid them.

As they descended, sweat added itself to the condensation beading Brokkolfr's brow. The warmth he had noticed on his last visit became heat; the water seemed warmer but not yet warm enough to burn.

Some springs could burn you, though. So Kari and Brokkolfr approached each rivulet or puddle with care, especially the ones that could be seen steaming.

The cavern seemed to run forever, down and down and down again, endless crawl spaces and serried galleries and draperies of stone. Brokkolfr could have imagined that they had spent the world's time here, worn out Ragnarok, and passed through the mists of Hel, were it not so hot in the depths—and if he were not grounded in the pack-sense, aware from Amma that the sun was not yet low in the sky.

They burned their first torches and kindled the second. Sometimes they had to push the spares through narrow passages ahead of them or drag them behind, bumping on repurposed boot cords. It was good that there was water, because they had to pause and drink it often, although it was bitter with limestone and smelt of sulfur. They sweated out so much they would be dizzy otherwise. If the stones by the entry had been polished, these were rough, and Brokkolfr had a sense that no one had ever passed this way before.

“It's not like a trellwarren,” Kari said when they paused under a great rose-and-white arch to rest and breathe.

“It's as hot as one.”

Kari snorted what might have been laughter, and Brokkolfr grinned back. “One more half-torch,” he said, “and we have to turn back.”

“Next time,” Kari said, “we'll carry extra and find someplace to make a cache.”

Brokkolfr levered himself up, dusting muddy silt off his rear. He had to walk stooped through most of the passages, scuttling like a crab, and he knew that in daylight his knees would be black-and-blue. “How will you keep them dry enough to kindle?”

“Oiled cloth?” Kari rose and took a hesitant step forward. He passed under the arch, into a crooked squeeze that did not—yet—require crawling, and vanished from sight. “It opens out past this!” he called back, and Brokkolfr followed.

Brokkolfr was still in the crooked passage, his torch held out before him and his arm bent at an awkward angle to keep the flames from his face, when he heard a snap like slate split with a chisel and Kari's sharp, truncated cry.

Hurry and you die,
Brokkolfr thought, feeling the sudden urgency and fear in the pack-sense. Amma was there within him, and he stepped carefully, meticulously, one of the heall cats stalking a brown rat through the grain stores. One foot, hesitate, shift weight. Bring the other up to the first, careful of the rippled and crooked floor, because the passage was too narrow to step through. And repeat, crouching, trying to peer past the flames of the torch to see anything beyond.

Four agonized steps brought Brokkolfr to the open space that Kari had found, a floor ahead smoother than good flagstones, flat as that pool in the first large chamber had been, a ceiling above as elaborate, arched, and beautiful.

“Stay there!” Kari called before Brokkolfr could see him. “The floor gave way.”

The strain in his voice betrayed him. Kari was hurt, and that was the distress Brokkolfr felt in the pack-sense. Kari was hurt, in pain—but not dead.

Brokkolfr would not allow Kari to be dead. Not when this expedition had been his idea. Enough werthreatbrothers had already died because Brokkolfr had not gotten to them in time.

Brokkolfr breathed out softly, and without moving his feet extended the torch and leaned around the corner.

Brokkolfr had seen enough winters to know what it looked like when a man fell through ice. And Kari had fallen through stone in the same manner—stone laid over water, half an inch thick and looking as solid as any tabletop until Kari had gone through it up to the chest. Or farther; from what Brokkolfr could see, water dripped from Kari's hair and eyebrows, and he'd lost his torch. But now he supported himself on the flats of his hands and his forearms laid on the broken stone, the water bearing most of his weight up.

He'd had the sense to go still once he fell, and the sense and luck to find the hole he'd made going in. So he was alive and not vanished under the floor of stone, drowned already. No steam rose around him, and he wasn't screaming, so the water was not boiling him.

Did he get it in his eyes? Othinn, what a way to go—but if he had, there was nothing to be done about it now.

It was better than falling through ice, Brokkolfr told himself. The temperature was not freezing; he had minutes to save Kari, not seconds. And like any wolfcarl, like any northman, he knew how to handle an ice rescue.

“My ankle is broken,” Kari said. “Go for help, Brokkolfr.”

“And leave you there in the water to drown?” Brokkolfr scoffed, keeping his voice light, as if the situation they were presented with was nothing but an amusing complication. “That would be bad manners.”

The flowstone gave him more than one place to wedge a torch, thankfully. Brokkolfr did so, waving it first to make it burn brightly, and hoped the draught through the cave would be enough to feed the flames for a little while. Then he turned back to Kari.

“I'm going to crawl out to you,” he said. “I don't suppose you've got some bottom there?”

“Nothing,” Kari said. “I picked a bad place to go through. Brokkolfr, you outweigh me.”